Im not one to go to war for big corporations usually, but I have been noticing a ton of people posting an article which essentially accuses the new Facebook messenger app of being extremely invasive and going all Cold War spy games on our asses. This is NOT a personal attack on anyone who has posted this article, I just feel the need to add my thoughts. So, warning - here goes a hefty Friday rant: Being someone with some (not an expert by any means) experience with mobile advertising and policies, I believe that this article is extremely misinformed. Any policies which allow an app to access your camera DO NOT imply that they are looking through your lens. It means that they now have the ability to upload photos to their app directly via your cameras hardware. This goes for any app involving photo upload/curating. Look up the Ts and Cs of any other app with similar photo functionality and you will find the same agreement clauses. Any policies which allow an app to access your contacts and contact access history DO NOT imply that they are spying on your day to day interactions. Seriously, our lives just arent that interesting. What this policy does, is allow the app to track who you contact most often in order to better tailor the user experience to you. Ever notice how your best friends and girlfriend/boyfriend are always at the top of your news feed? Thats this policy at work. Any policies which request access to your phones SMS functionality DO NOT imply that they are going to send messages to your contacts without your approval. This policy allows you to connect to another contacts device via cell reception, and not just through an internet connection. Skype is already doing this, and you will find the exact same policy in their privacy settings. Now, I understand that there are a ton of frightening thoughts that could pop into ones head when reading all of these policies. It also doesnt help that Facebook is trying to be a catch-all social media destination - therefore they have so many different policies in one place that it just seems overwhelming. And maybe Ill eat my words later when we find out that Facebook is run by an Orwellian organization whose sole purpose is to enslave us one by one, but for now I think we should take all of this fear mongering with a grain of salt. *Exhale.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 15:15:32 +0000
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